"That truth should be silent I had almost forgot"--Enobarbus in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, back in Rome after having been too long in Egypt.---------
Melville's PIERRE, Book 4, chapter 5: "Something ever comes of all persistent inquiry; we are not so continually curious for nothing."

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

DukeCheck on the Administrative Failures of Richard Halleck Brodhead

Like our football coaches during the decades- long drought, Richard Halleck Brodhead enters another year of his Presidency in desperate need of a victory. His major initiatives are mired down, each of his goals elusive.

Unlike
Coaches Wilson, Goldsmith, Franks and Roof, Brodhead is secure, to
remain in office through the Duke Forward fund-raising drive which has
four more years to run.

The most obvious initiative that is in the air is the proposed Duke Kunshan University. But there are more:

–
Brodhead told the first Dukies that he addressed, the Class of 2008
when they were freshmen, that they would benefit in their senior year
from an entire New Central Campus focused on the
arts. This was the heart of the latest strategic plan for the
university; it is not even mentioned in Duke Forward, which is supposed
to raise money to implement our priorities. What might have been a
victory for Brodhead, had he delivered, is now a liability because he
has not.

– Brodhead created a new level of administrator, Dean of
Undergraduate Education, who promptly set about recreating dorm life.
Keohane 4 was to be just a prototype, an example of our highest priority
to combine and enhance the residential and dining experience. This,
too, was at the heart of strategic planning; and this too, amazingly, is
not even mentioned in Duke Forward. We repeat: what might have been a
victory for Brodhead, had he delivered, is now a liability because he
has not.

– Brodhead recounted how Duke had struggled to tear down
the walls of racial discrimination that kept some students from
attending. How ironic, he said, if we were to allow a new socio-economic
wall to become just as big a barrier. To his great credit, he
instituted need-blind admissions, but today the commitment is strong,
but he has not raised enough money to sustain his dream; indeed it is
alive today only because we are dipping into endowment funds that should more properly be left for future generations. What might have been a victory for him is now teetering.

–
Brodhead has not delivered on equality either, not in composing the
faculty or his administration. He has fudged: even though Chancellor
Dzau arrived at Duke at the precise time as Brodhead, Uncle Dick has
claimed credit for installing an Asian in a key post. The simple fact is
that Brodhead presided over eight years when no person of color reached
the top rungs. And now three years in which we have fewer black
professors than earlier.

Need we repeat: what might have been a victory for him is now a liability.

–
Brodhead got hit with a world-wide recession that took away a quarter
of our endowment, and he properly sought to ease in the pain, a “smaller
Duke” he said, rather than having us take a thump. He had a three-year
plan to return to a sustainable budget — but in the 5th year, we will still dip more than $100 million into reserves. That cannot continue. But he seems helpless to make it stop.

Duke
forward right Campaign logo– While other university presidents who took
office at the same time as Brodhead were completing their major fund
raising drive (example: University of Pennsylvania), Brodhead was just
starting his. There is no doubt that $3.25 billion low-balls the need,
and even so, there are substantial doubts about progress toward raising
it. Example: there is only one $10 million gift from a new donor.
Rather than shining with results like Bollinger at Columbia or Hennessy
of Stanford, each of whom raised 50 percent more than their target, which is to say totals of $6 billion, there is a distinct possibility that Duke Forward will fall short.

Just as Brodhead’s mini-fund raising drive, the Financial Aid Initiative, had to move the goalposts in order to claim victory.

–
There is no albatross around his neck that weighs more than Duke
Kunshan University. He grew defensive about it, and then contradictory.
He last addressed stakeholders on this 13 months ago. If the Chinese
reject our plan, or spoil it through violations of academic freedom and
other agreements, we will have to withdraw. We have no plan B for
intensive international involvement.

Make no mistake: even if the
Chinese regime approves the start of DKU, its troubles are just
beginning. The risk of failure seems far greater than the opportunity to
succeed.

In achieving what he has in his nine years at Duke,
Brodhead has been highly dependent upon a trio of top subordinates —
Lange, Dzau and Trask — that is dissolving. As one thoughtful
administrator wrote us, “A lot of treading water around here now…all
waiting to find out about the new team and budgets. (Most) feel
uninformed, unconsulted, and at risk.”

So those are the broad
areas that we had hoped our President would address and make progress
in, and why we started this essay saying he is in desperate need of a
victory.

We thank you for reading DukeCheck and joining in love of this great institution.

About Me

Hershel Parker is the author of the 1997 Pulitzer finalist, Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins, 1996) and Herman Melville: A Biography, 1851-1891 (Johns Hopkins, 2002). Each volume won the top award from the Association of American Publishers. Parker’s 1984 Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction brought biographical evidence to bear on textual theory, literary criticism, and literary theory. Parker and the team of now mature Hayford students are finishing the final volume of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition. Robert Sandberg is helping with the layout and design of three print volumes of The New Melville Log. Parker in late 2013 is at work on Ornery People: What Was a Depression Okie?, a book about his white and red American ancestors. Parker's Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative was put on the NEW YORKER blog as one of the Books to Watch Out for in January ("Parker writes with a rare combination of humor and passion"). On 30-31 March 2013 the WALL STREET JOURNAL gave a page and a third to Carl Rollyson's review of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY as "a superb contribution to a fledgling field: the study of the writing of literary lives."